CHENNAI: "Hey mom, so many homebakers are getting popular nowadays. You too make delicious cakes, why don’t you open a home bakery?”
U Devi’s daughters, aged 14 and 11, told her during the first Covid-19-induced lockdown in 2020. Devi, who had just lost her job as a Tamil teacher in a private school in Thanjavur due to the pandemic, thought of giving it a try. Thus was born ‘Fluffy the Creamy World’ which has now turned into one of the best bakeries in Thanjavur.
This was not the first time that Devi lost her job. Born in Thiruvarur district, Devi worked as a Tamil teacher in a private school before getting married. As she got married to a CRPF personnel, she had to travel to different states and had to leave the job.
When she was in Hyderabad in 2010, she passed the state education department’s examination and was posted as a teacher in one of the last Tamil medium schools in Kachiguda in Hyderabad. However, the jobs for non-locals in government institutions were reduced after the state was bifurcated into Andhra Pradesh and Telangana and she lost her job in 2017.
“My husband got transferred to North India after that, but I decided to relocate to Thanjavur so that both my daughters could study without changing schools. I started working in a private school in 2019, but I lost my job when the pandemic hit,” she says.
“That was when my daughters suggested I try my luck in opening a home bakery. When I was in Telangana, I used to attend baking classes at a welfare centre,” she says. The bakery offers more than 100 varieties of cakes, many of which are unique and hard to find even in big bakeries. The tender coconut cake and rose milk cake are two of the best sellers from the list.
Her business started to expand when she went to apply for the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) licence and the officer there suggested she list the bakery on food delivery apps. “We took his advice and listed it on three different apps. Due to the wide range of cakes that we offer, we started receiving multiple orders,” she gushes, adding that the bakery now gets 15 orders per day on average.
“On special occasions like Christmas and New Year’s Eve, the bakery gets over 25 orders,” she proudly says. Talking about the method of preparation, she says, “I ensure that a quality cake base is used. Condensed milk is used to soften the cake instead of sugar syrup or other preservatives.”
She further says that the cakes are available for a reasonable price range of Rs 350-400. “As of now, the focus is not profit. I do it out of passion. I felt blank after losing my job as a teacher, but now I am happy again that I am baking. I believe that my customer base will increase gradually,” she adds.